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Negative Effects Of The Columbian Exchange

Decent Essays

The Columbian Exchange that occurred in the Western Hemisphere subjected America to extensive changes that would fundamentally change the people that lived there, the people that would come to live there, and the land itself. In fact, the America that we know today has been shaped by the events that took place hundreds of years ago during the Columbian Exchange. As European people brought their culture and values to the Americas, it started to combine and mix with the cultures and values already established there, changing both Europeans and Indians in admittedly small, but significant ways. While this can be considered a positive point of the Columbian Exchange, in its entirety, the Columbian Exchange could be considered a disaster, especially for the natives that lived in America before the Europeans came to claim it. Not only did Indians suffer at the hands of European diseases that we completely foreign to them, killing off millions and changing the Indian demographic forever, but the world that they grew to be so familiar with changed around them. When the Europeans first hit land, for the most part, they did not seek to completely obliterate the Indians that already inhabited the land. Instead, Europeans desired to convert Indians and utilize them, which inevitably led to cultures mixing both ways. For example, in the reading it states that before the Europeans had made extensive contact and established trade with the Indians, they would kill en masse to feed their

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